“Government is the great fiction through which everyone endeavors to live at the expense of everyone else,” wrote the celebrated French legislator, economist, and political theorist Frederic Bastiat 165 years ago. With recent reports out of the Census Bureau indicating nearly half of all Americans are receiving some form of direct government subsidy – Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, unemployment benefits, housing assistance, veterans’ benefits, etc. – can there be any doubt he was right?

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American companies that reincorporate abroad are not doing so to avoid paying taxes on U.S. earnings, despite the often misleading impressions left by the rantings of Senators Carl Levin, Dick Durbin, Elizabeth Warren, and others to the contrary. They are doing it to avoid paying U.S. taxes on earnings in other countries.

American companies that reincorporate abroad are not doing so to avoid paying taxes on U.S. earnings, despite the often misleading impressions left by the rantings of Senators Carl Levin, Dick Durbin, Elizabeth Warren, and others to the contrary. They are doing it to avoid paying U.S. taxes on earnings in other countries.

Imagine police seize your money, your car, even your house. Imagine this happens without you being convicted of a crime or even charged with one. Imagine being told you must sue the government to get back your property and prove you did nothing wrong, and the government can do nothing – nothing – and still keep the property.

Timothy Noah of MSNBC recently informed us, “In theory, raising the minimum wage ought to increase unemployment, but in practice, economists (including a few at the not-exactly-left-leaning Goldman Sachs) have lately struggled to find any real-world evidence of that happening. Job creation is actually faster in the states that have raised the minimum wage.”

Numerous polls over the years have identified the property tax as one of the most hated taxes—if not the most hated tax—in America. Ironically, something cities and counties across the country have enacted to reduce property taxes actually drives them higher.

Americans recently celebrated Independence Day—the day the Continental Congress formally adopted the Declaration of Independence and announced the 13 American colonies regarded themselves as sovereign states no longer part of the British Empire and subject to its rules and taxes.

Imagine police seize your money, your car, even your house. Imagine this happens without you being convicted of a crime or even charged with one. Imagine being told you must sue the government to get back your property and prove you did nothing wrong, and the government can do nothing – nothing – and still keep the property.

Rarely do some of the nation’s most powerful politicians and businesspeople laud banks that report big profits when in fact they have lost billions of dollars. But we’re witnessing this spectacle on behalf of the Export-Import Bank of the United States, which for many decades, and for good reason, has been called by its critics “The Bank of Boeing.” Its charter expires September 30, and a battle over its possible extension is brewing between the political establishment and reformers.

How is that school shootings were almost unheard of when there was no age limit to buy guns, no licensing of gun dealers, and no such thing as a background check or waiting period? Could the problem be people and not guns, which, after all, are inanimate objects? Do knives compel us to stab? Do baseball bats compel us to bludgeon? Do pills compel us to poison?

A judge in Sangamon County Circuit Court has blocked a modest reform of Illinois’ pension system for state workers and retirees outside Chicago from taking effect June 1, giving Gov. Pat “Four Counties” Quinn the excuse he’s probably been looking for to block reforms for two of Chicago’s pension plans. (I’ll explain “Four Counties” in a moment.)

For every 100 mortgages being sold in the United States these days, at least 95 of them have government backing. We’re told America has a free-market economy? Not judging by the government’s involvement in housing, arguably the most important market there is. Most people can go years without needing health care. A healthy adult can go weeks without food. We cannot go one day without needing shelter.

Unbelievable: More than 2,800 Internal Revenue Service workers who had been disciplined recently received millions of dollars in bonuses and time off as part of an employee recognition program, a new government audit shows.

President Obama and many of his fellow Democrat politicians think they have identified a terrible injustice in the “gender pay gap.” But with almost no effort, anyone who can access the Internet can go to the Bureau of Labor Statistics website and find information showing a far greater injustice: the pay gap between young people and older workers.